A call for unity for a secular and independent Turkey: The Republicans' Congress sets out

The Republicans' Congress, which convened in Ankara on May 24-25, 2025, took a strong stance against the liquidation of the Republic by uniting around the values of secularism, independence, and populism. The congress concluded with a joint declaration from participants across Turkey. The declaration highlighted the emphasis: "We will raise a secular and independent Turkey as a republic of the working people."

The congress concluded with a determination to build a popular movement against current economic, political, and ideological attacks, while embracing the founding revolution of the Republic of Turkey. Participants pointed out that the Republic has been destroyed step by step not only during the AKP government, but since the September 12 regime.

The full text of the declaration is as follows:

"We will raise a secular and independent Turkey as a republic of the working people.

The Republicans' Congress, which convened in Ankara on Saturday, May 24, and Sunday, May 25, 2025, will go down in history as a strong step forward in the direction of the unity of Republicans. Our Congress embraces and salutes the initiatives taken before it in the direction of the Republic rising again, which has suffered great destruction under ongoing heavy and multi-faceted attacks.

With the awareness that we can only build the future as all Republicans by combining our labor and goals, we see the May 24-25, 2025 Congress as a new beginning. All individuals and institutions that participated in, followed, conveyed their support to, and in short, were a part of this beginning, are the hosts of the Republicans' Congress.

Together, we will establish a careful and advanced dialogue among us and design our common march together. It is our primary responsibility to include all individuals and institutions that could not attend the May 24-25 Congress for any reason but share the direction of this Final Declaration in our common march as soon as possible.

The Republicans' Congress is determined to continue on its path by growing and expanding its scope.

1. The founding of the Republic of Turkey is a great revolution. This Revolution was distilled from long-term modernization and enlightenment movements, the struggle for freedom against Ottoman tyranny, the struggle for secularism against the theocratic regime, and the national war of liberation against the divisive and destructive projects of imperialism, occupation, and collaborators. The Grand National Assembly of Turkey abolished the sultanate in November 1922 and closed the book on the old regime with the proclamation of the Republic on October 29, 1923.

2. What was left behind was a religion-based regime that did not recognize citizenship! It was an outdated expansionism that was thrown into the dustbin of history, hoping for help from imperialist balances and aiming to regain its own expansionist imperial past! The closed book was that of the occupier and collaborationism!

3. Our Republican Revolution is an irreversible leap forward in terms of secularism, independence, parliamentary rule, the construction of the modern nation-state, public economy, and populist practices. Today, all these values are under open or covert attack in the fields of politics, law, and sovereign ideology. However, each of them has been woven into the tissues of society and is embraced by the broad masses of the people. The future of Turkey cannot be protected or built by trivializing, ignoring, or devaluing this leap.

4. The gains of the Republic were not only intended to be liquidated under the AKP government, which has exceeded twenty-two years. The September 12 coup regime, which sanctified the Turkish-Islamic synthesis as its official ideology, caused the most severe damage by hiding behind the demagoguery of saving the Republic. The return of sects, whose doors the Republic had locked, to social and political life was implemented by presenting it as an element of multi-party democracy. By preserving tribal structures, the concept of "equality of citizens" belonging to the Republic was hollowed out. The cooperation agreements reached with Western imperialism, whose decision to dismantle Turkey we erased with the National Struggle, have caused imperialism to re-settle in the country and exert weight on decision-making mechanisms. Public economy and popular solidarity have been sacrificed over time to the looting of the capitalist class and government supporters...

5. The AKP has its signature on the liquidation of the gains of the Republic. However, the responsibility belongs to the trio of imperialism, big capital, and religious reactionism.

6. The Republicans' Congress calls on all Republican institutions, individuals, and forces to meet on this axis and to implement a popular movement to raise the Republic.

7. The Republicans' Congress vehemently rejects the reduction of secularism to a lifestyle preference, the claim that it contradicts the beliefs of the people, and almost apologizing on behalf of past practices, or even presenting it as a crime. Secularism is the starting point for removing religious beliefs and rules from social and political life, and thereby allowing the future of society to be freely decided by the citizens who constitute it, rather than by a divine, supernatural power. Overcoming the great regression experienced will be possible by implementing secularism as a movement of enlightenment for the working people. It is clear that one of the most important elements of this popular enlightenment is the struggle of children and women, who gained citizenship rights with the Republic and were subjected to a massacre with the rise of the reactionism that liquidated the Republic.

8. The Republicans' Congress advocates for the cancellation of all types of dependency agreements in economic, military, and other matters signed with imperialist states for Turkey's full independence. Among the mandatory and urgent steps to be taken are withdrawing from NATO membership, seizing foreign bases, stopping and reversing the EU membership process, terminating the Readmission Agreement regarding immigrants with EU countries, and stopping the sale of our country's surface and underground assets to domestic and foreign companies and individuals by making them a subject of trade. We also vehemently reject the questioning of the Treaty of Lausanne and the Montreux Convention, which are the inseparable complements of Turkey's international recognition and sovereign rights. It is seen that Turkey's political and administrative fabric is wanted to be loosened with slogans that change from period to period, under the pretexts of globalization, democratization, peace, or security. Yet, apart from these false pretexts, it is complementary and inevitable for Turkey to establish relationships with the whole world, starting with its neighbors, in mutual interest, cooperation, assistance, and solidarity, and to strengthen its fully independent, unitary, and centralized state structure.

9. It is no coincidence that the process that destroyed the Republic in Turkey was accompanied by unlimited looting in the economy. Factories, enterprises, health, education, and social security systems built as a requirement of the Republic have been the objects of this plunder. The principle of public interest and state planning in the economy have been completely abandoned, and assets created primarily based on the people's taxes have been transferred to private capital owners. Not only the holdings openly favored by the AKP government, but monopoly capital as a whole, has become enriched to an unprecedented extent in deep inequality at the expense of the deepening poverty of the vast majority of our people and the lack of future for the youth. Working people feel widespread anger against this injustice. The fact that this justified anger is frequently expressed through the values and images of the Republic, the red and white Turkish flag, and the personality of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, also reveals the historical overlap between struggles for rights and Republicanism. However, anger and historical sense are not enough to structure the economy by placing the country's benefit, security, and the happiness of the working people at the center, rather than the profit of capital. What is needed, beyond these, is conscious social organization. The current low level of political and trade union organization of the working people constitutes the biggest gap in the struggle to raise the Republic. The Republicans' Congress calls on the working people to organize and all Republicans to support this as part of it. Because of this class dimension, our Republic will only be able to rise with a government of the working people.

10. Recently, under the discourse that Turkey needs to strengthen its internal structure against concrete, imminent, and serious external threats, and behind the mask of ending terrorism, which no one can oppose, steps that will create the exact opposite results and increase the danger of disintegration are being taken directly under the leadership of the political power. It has also been announced that this process is intended to be linked to the making of a new constitution by the reactionary political power with the support of imperialism. The Republicans' Congress will stand against the constitution or other legal regulations that are openly discussed to target the pre-Republican Revolution. Until the will to write a Republican constitution on a revolutionary basis emerges, no changes will be allowed that erode the principles of secularism, independence, and publicness even on paper in the current constitution, divide society into identities and communities, or question the borders. The way for Turkey's unity, security, continuity, and well-being, and for its citizens of all origins to form an equal and free integrity, passes through the rapid recovery of the heavily wounded values of the Republic.

11. The political power's plan to destroy the Republic has remained helpless in the face of the wall formed by the vast majority of society embracing Republican values. Behind the government's increasingly violent lawless and illegitimate pressures is not an unstoppable power, but this helplessness. To break the resistance of society, even the most basic citizen and human rights such as voting and being elected are being attacked, and the entire public is being tried to be surrendered through terrorism with groundless and unlawful arrests and trials. The Republicans' Congress will continue to be in solidarity with the victims of these attacks and all forces standing against them.

12. This first meeting of the Republicans' Congress was inevitable and necessary, but it could only set out general principles and basic expectations. The Republicans' Congress will both deepen its institutionalization and spread its views and discussions to the masses by organizing a series of panels, symposiums, conferences, and public meetings under various sub-headings. We Republicans who have come together do not find it strange that there are differences among us in our evaluations of the past and on various issues. Attitudes that are not natural and healthy are, on one hand, ignoring our differences, and on the other, considering them as obstacles in front of the common march. The confidence we have that we will build the future together and our common denominator that the Republican Revolution sheds light on this construction unite us.

13. The "First" Republicans' Congress, which convened on May 24-25, 2025, will be followed by other congresses whose effectiveness and prevalence will increase each time.

14. The Republicans' Congress aims for the unity of Republicans to ultimately turn into a Republican front or alliance. We know that the Republican front will represent the aspirations and anger of the vast majority of Turkey, and we believe that it will be the vehicle for these to turn into an organized force. In this direction, an effective coordination board will be established among the individuals and institutions that take initiative and responsibility in the organization of the Republicans' Congress, and that contribute to and support the Congress.

We will raise a secular and independent Turkey as a republic of the working people.

We declare to everyone, to our people, that we have set out.

History is the witness that the rights of the people are reclaimed sooner or later."

News Source: 12punto